June was a watershed month for homosexual rights in the West. On 10 June, a court in the province of Ontario, Canada, declared same-sex marriages legal. Since the federal government has not appealed the decision, Canada in effect has become the third country in the world, after Belgium and the Netherlands, to legalise same-sex marriages, and hundreds of same-sex Canadian couples have already taken advantage of the ruling. Two weeks later, on 26 June, the US supreme court struck down laws banning sodomy, which are still on the books in 13 states, ruling that the state cannot make "private sexual conduct a crime". And four days after that, the British government made public a plan to give lesbian and gay couples the same rights as their married heterosexual counterparts.
The homosexual community in South Asia, especially in India, has been making news as well. On 29 June, the city of Calcutta hosted the first-ever gay pride march in the Subcontinent. Though small in the number of participants, it was an important start, and there are other indications that the community is making its presence felt. The Indian Council of Medical Research is debating the adoption of guidelines that would allow lesbians and single mothers to use reproductive technology to conceive babies. The BBC reports that The Boyfriend, a recently-published Indian novel dealing with love between an openly gay man and a young boy who feels unable to pursue his homosexual instincts, "has raised hopes within the country's largely invisible gay community of the chances of coming out of the closet". And in Nepal in May, the Blue Diamond Society, an NGO working to promote homosexual rights, held a beauty pageant for homosexuals, lesbians and bisexuals in Kathmandu's National Theatre.
These developments notwithstanding, homosexuals in South Asia are a rather persecuted lot. Even in the big cities, where conditions have improved over the last couple of decades, and where there is now some limited semblance of social life for members of the community, especially for those who are wealthy and have access to clubs and the Internet – there are significant hurdles in the path. Homosexuals are still subject to many forms of discrimination, in particular housing and employment. In Bombay, "people have been kicked out after their sexuality was revealed", says a gay activist who set up an Internet service called GHAR (Gay Housing Assistance Resource).
If gay men have a difficult time, the strongly patriarchal nature of South Asian societies ensures an even worse treatment for lesbians. The oppression and discrimination they face has been rationalised on the basis of claims about gender, culture, tradition, values and morals. One noteworthy recent instance of anti-lesbian activity was the Shiv Sena's campaign to stop screenings of the 1999 film Fire, a work centred on a lesbian relationship, combined with virulent attacks against its director Deepa Mehta and the actors who played its protagonists, Shabana Azmi and Nandita Das.